The year four classes have been busy lately collecting samples of soil from different places across Western Australia to study in class. We were particularly looking for what soils are made up of. This week we used magnifying lens and microscopes to carefully examine the samples and describe their properties.
All the different colours of the soil samples.
We found out that soil is made up of:
- sand
- small rocks
- silt
- animal droppings
- plant matter
- animal matter
- insects
- air
- water
Some of the students got to venture over to Sloan’s Reserve where we carefully collected a sample of soil from the wetlands area to send to University of Western Australia’s ‘Microblitz’ science program. This soil sample will be tested to find out what different micro organisms it contains. This helps the university to build a picture of soil quality in W.A.
Our soil sample location Collecting and bagging the sample